TOPIC: Inking the Splatoon Manga

For something a bit different I thought I'd post my thoughts on the Splatoon manga, the first volume of which was released in North America a few months ago. There are quite a few other official Nintendo manga series, but this is the first one I've read. I didn't really know what to expect, but this debut volume really feels like a glorified advertisement rather than a compelling manga. The author did a good job of giving of the main character "Goggles" a lively personality, although not much time is spent on the rest of his team (Team Blue). The other three members of Team Blue are also named after Splatoon gear, and Goggles plays the typical plucky "scatter-brained but still somehow comes out on top" manga protagonist role.

Each chapter consists of Team Blue facing off against a superior team, but somehow using their teamwork to win. The manga faithfully recreates all the elements of the game, including name-checking specific weapon, sub-weapons, stages, and strategies. As a fan of the Splatoon video games it's fun to see the game in manga form and the artwork captures the unique and "fresh" aesthetics of the game, but there's very little plot or characterization to make this a distinctive experience. It definitely feels aimed at younger kids, although I'm still somewhat hopeful that volume 2 will pick up and actually provide a little more plot. I'm not really expecting it to, though, but as it comes out next week I won't have much longer to find out.